Posts Tagged ‘Lessons Learned’

Function first, no exceptions.

Before a design can be accused of having too much material and labor costs, it must be able to meet its functional specifications.  Before that is accomplished, it’s likely there’s not enough material and labor in the design and more must be added to meet the functional specifications.  In that way, it likely doesn’t cost enough.  If the cost is right but the design doesn’t work, you don’t have a viable offering.

Before the low-cost manufacturing process can be chosen, the design must be able to do what customers need it to do.  If the design does not yet meet its functional specification, it will change and evolve until it can.  And once that is accomplished, low-cost manufacturing processes can be selected that fit with the design.  Sure, the design might be able to be subtly adapted to fit the manufacturing process, but only as much as it preserves the design’s ability to meet its functional requirements. If you have a low-cost manufacturing process but the design doesn’t meet the specifications, you don’t have anything to sell.

Before a product can function robustly over a wide range of operating conditions, the prototype design must be able to meet the functional requirements at nominal operating conditions.  If you’re trying to improve robustness before it has worked the first time, your work is out of sequence.

Before you can predict when the project will be completed, the design must be able to meet its functional requirements.  Before that, there’s no way to predict when the product will launch. If you advertise the project completion date before the design is able to meet the functional requirements, you’re guessing on the date.

When your existing customers buy an upgrade package, it’s because the upgrade functions better.  If the upgrade didn’t work better, customers wouldn’t buy it.

When your existing customers replace the old product they bought from you with the new one you just launched, it’s because the new one works better.  If the new one didn’t work better, customers wouldn’t buy it.

Function first, no exceptions.

Image credit — Mrs Airwolfhound

When You Want To Make A Difference

When you want to make a difference, put your whole self out there.

When you want to make a difference, tell your truth.

When you want to make a difference, invest in people.

When you want to make a difference, play the long game.

When you want to make a difference, do your homework.

When you want to make a difference, buy lunch.

When you want to make a difference, let others in.

When you want to make a difference, be real.

When you want to make a difference, listen.

When you want to make a difference, choose a side.

When you want to make a difference, don’t take things personally.

When you want to make a difference, confide in others.

When you want to make a difference, send a text out of the blue.

And when you want to make a difference for yourself, make a difference for others.

Image credit – Tambako The Jaguar

How To Finish Projects

Finishing a project is usually associated with completing all the deliverables.  But in the real world there are other flavors of finishing that come when there is no reason or ability to complete all the deliverables or completing them will take too long.

Everyone’s favorite flavor of finishing is when all the deliverables are delivered and sales of the new product are more than anticipated.  Finishing this way is good for your career.  Finish this way if you can.

When most of the deliverables are met, but some of them aren’t met at the levels defined by the specification, the specification can be reduced to match the actual performance and the project can be finished.  This is the right thing to do when the shortfall against the specification is minor and the product will still be well received by customers.  In this case, it makes no sense to hold up the launch for a minor shortfall. There is no shame here.  It’s time to finish and make money.

After working on the project for longer than planned and the deliverables aren’t met, it’s time to finish the project by stopping it.  Though this type of finishing is emotionally difficult, finishing by stopping is far better than continuing to spend resources on a project that will likely never amount to anything.  Think opportunity cost.  If allocating resources to the project won’t translate into customer value and cash, it’s better to finish now so you can allocate the resources to a project that has a better chance of delivering value to you and your customers.

Before a project is started in earnest and the business case doesn’t make sense, or the commercial risk is too high, or the technical risk is too significant, or it’s understaffed, finish the project by not starting it. This is probably the most important type of finishing you can do.  Again, think of opportunity cost.  By finishing early (before starting) resources can start a new project almost immediately and resources were prevented from working on a project that wasn’t going to deliver value.

Just as we choose the right way to start projects and the right way to run them, we must choose the right way to finish them.

Image credit — majiedqasem

The Three Ts of Empowerment

If you give a person the tools, time, and training, you’ve empowered them.  They know what to do, they have supporting materials, and they have the permission to spend the time they need to get it done.

If you give a person the tools and the time but not the training, they will struggle to figure out the tools but they’ll likely get there in the end.  It won’t be all that efficient, but because you’ve given them the time they’ll be able to figure out the tools and get it done.

If you give a person the time but not the tools or the training, they’ll go on a random walk and make no progress.  Yes, you’ve given them the time, but you’ve given them no real support or guidance.  They’ll likely become tired and frustrated and you’ll have allocated their time yet made no progress.

If you give a person the tools and training but not the time, you’ve demoralized them.  They have new skills and new tools and want to use them, but they’re too busy doing their day job.  This is the opposite of empowerment.

If you’re not willing to give people the time to do new work, don’t bother providing new tools, and don’t bother training them.  Stay the course and accept things as they are.  Otherwise, you’ll disempower your best people.

But if you want to empower people, give them all three – tools, time, and training.

Image credit — Paul Balfe

Playing Tetris With Your Project Portfolio

When planning the projects for next year, how do you decide which projects are a go and which are a no?  One straightforward way is to say yes to projects when there are resources lined up to get them done and no to all others.  Sure, the projects must have a good return on investment but we’re pretty good at that part.  But we’re not good at saying no to projects based on real resource constraints – our people and our budgets.

It’s likely your big projects are well-defined and well-staffed.  The problem with these projects is usually the project timeline is disrespectful of the work content and the timeline is overly optimistic.  If the project timeline is shorter than that of a previously completed project of a similar flavor, with a similar level of novelty and similar resource loading, the timeline is overly optimistic and the project will be late.

Project delays in the big projects block shared resources from moving onto other projects within the appropriate time window which cascades delays into those other projects.  And the project resources themselves must stay on the big projects longer than planned (we knew this would happen even before the project started) which blocks the next project from starting on time and generates a second set of delays that rumble through the project portfolio.  But the big projects aren’t the worst delay-generating culprits.

The corporate initiatives and infrastructure projects are usually well-staffed with centralized resources but these projects require significant work from the business units and is an incremental demand for them.  And the only place the business units can get the resources is to pull them off the (too many) big projects they’ve already committed to.  And remember, the timelines for those projects are overly optimistic.  The big projects that were already late before the corporate initiatives and infrastructure projects are slathered on top of them are now later.

Then there are small projects that don’t look like they’ll take long to complete, but they do.  And though the project plan does not call for support resources (hey, this is a small project you know), support resources are needed.  These small projects drain resources from the big projects and the support resources they need.  Delay on delay on delay.

Coming out of the planning process, all teams are over-booked with too many projects, too few resources, and timelines that are too short. And then the real fun begins.

Over the course of the year, new projects arise and are started even though there are already too few resources to deliver on the existing projects.  Here’s a rule no one follows:  If the teams are fully-loaded, new projects cannot start before old ones finish.

It makes less than no sense to start projects when resources are already triple-double booked on existing projects.  This behavior has all the downside of starting a project (consumption of resources) with none of the upside (progress).  And there’s another significant downside that most don’t see.   The inappropriate “starting” of the new project allows the company to tell itself that progress is being made when it isn’t.  All that happens is existing projects are further starved for resources and the slow pace of progress is slowed further.

It’s bad form to play Tetris with your project portfolio.

Running too many projects in parallel is not faster.  In fact, it’s far slower than matching the projects to the resources on-hand to do them.  It’s essential to keep in mind that there is no partial credit for starting a project.  There is 100% credit for finishing a project and 0% credit for starting and running a project.

With projects, there are two simple rules.  1) Limit the number of projects by the available resources.  2) Finish a project before starting one.

Image credit – gerlos

The Next Evolution of Your Success

New ways to work are new because they have not been done before.

How many new ways to work have you demonstrated over the last year?

New customer value is new when it has not been shown before.

What new customer value have you demonstrated over the last year?

New ways to deliver customer value are new when you have not done it that way before.

How much customer value have you demonstrated through non-product solutions?

The success of old ways of working block new ways.

How many new ways to work have been blocked by your success?

The success of old customer value blocks new customer value.

How much new customer value has been blocked by your success with old customer value?

The success of tried and true ways to deliver customer value blocks new ways to deliver customer value.

Which new ways to deliver unique customer value have been blocked by your success?

Might you be more successful if you stop blocking yourself with your success?

How might you put your success behind you and create the next evolution of your success?

Image credit — Andy Morffew

Overcoming Not Invented Here (NIH), The Most Powerful Blocker of Innovation

When new ideas come from the outside, they are dismissed out of hand.  The technical term for this behavior is Not Invented Here (NIH).  Because it was not invented by the party with official responsibility, that party stomps it into dust.  But NIH doesn’t stomp in public; it stomps in mysterious ways.

Wow!  That’s a great idea!  Then, mysteriously, no progress is made and it dies a slow death.

That’s cool! Then there’s a really good reason why it can’t be worked.

That’s interesting!  Then that morphs into the kiss of death.

We never thought of that.  But it won’t scale.

That’s novel!  But no one is asking for it.

That’s terribly exciting! We’ll study it into submission.

That’s incredibly different!  And likely too different.

When the company’s novel ideas die on the vine, they likely die at the hands of NIH. If you can’t understand why a novel idea never made it out of the lab, investigate the crime scene and you may find NIH’s fingerprints.  If customers liked the new idea yet it went nowhere, it could be NIH was behind the crime. If it makes sense, but it doesn’t make progress, NIH is the prime suspect.

If a team is not receptive to novel ideas from the outside, it’s because they consider their own ideas sufficiently good to meet their goals.  Things are going well and there’s no reason to adopt new ideas from the outside.  And buried in this description are the two ways to overcome NIH.

The fastest way to overcome NIH is to help a new idea transition from an idea conceived by someone outside the team to an idea created by someone inside the team.  Here’s how that goes.  The idea is first demonstrated by the external team in the form of a functional prototype.  This first step aims to help the internal team understand the new idea.  Then, the first waiting period is endured where nothing happens.  After the waiting period, a somewhat different functional prototype is created by the external team and shown to the internal team.  The objective is to help the internal team understand the new idea a little better.  Then, the second waiting period is endured where nothing happens.  Then, a third functional prototype is created and shown to the internal team.  This time, shortcomings are called out by the external team that can only be addressed by the internal team.  Then, the last waiting period is endured.  Then, after the third waiting period, the internal team addresses the shortcomings and makes the idea their own.  NIH is dead, and it’s off to the races.

The second fastest way to overcome NIH is to wait for the internal team to transition to a team that is receptive to new ideas initiated outside the team.  The only way for a team to make the transition is for them to realize that their internal ideas are insufficient to meet their objectives.  This can only come after their internal ideas are shown to be inadequate multiple times.  Only after exhausting all other possibilities, will a team consider ideas generated from outside the team.

When the external team recognizes the internal team is out of ideas, they demonstrate a functional prototype to the internal team.  And they do it in an “informational” way, meaning the prototype is investigatory in nature and not intended to become the seed of the internal team’s next generation platform.  And as it turns out, it’s only a strange coincidence that the functional prototype is precisely what the internal team needs to fuel the next-generation platform.  And the prototype is not fully wrung out.  And as it turns out, the parts that need to be wrung out are exactly what the external team knows how to do.  And when the internal team needs expertise from the external team to address the novel elements, as it turns out the external team conveniently has the time to help out.

Not Invented Here (NIH) is real.  And it’s a powerful force. And it can be overcome.  And when it is overcome, the results are spectacular.

Image credit — Becky Mastubara

The Power of the Present Moment

You can’t see if you don’t look.

You can’t look if you’re distracted.

You can’t be distracted if you’re living in the present moment.

You can’t live in the present moment if you’re sad about the past or afraid of the future.

You can’t be sad about the past unless you want it to be different.

You can’t be afraid of the future unless you want to control it.

You can’t want the past to be different if you accept things as they are.

You can’t want to control the future if you accept you have no control over it.

Yet, we want the past to be different and we want to control the future.

When you find yourself wanting the past to be different or wanting to control the future, focus on your breath for a minute or two.  That will bring you back to the present moment.

And if that doesn’t work, go outside and walk in nature for fifteen minutes then quiet yourself and focus on your breath for a minute or two.  That should bring you back to the present moment.

Everything gets better when you’re sitting in the present moment.

Some Questions to Ask Yourself

If you can’t imagine it, it’s impossible.

But if you can imagine it, at worst it can only be almost impossible.

Who controls your imagination?

What you think about something affects you like it’s true, even when it isn’t.

And what you think is true often isn’t.

Are you responsible for what you think?

If you have two things to do, that’s doable.  So, do them.

And if you have twenty things to do, chose two and do them.

What if getting ten things done in a week is enough?

If the work is good, it’s likely you’re doing it with people you enjoy.

And if you work with people you enjoy, the work gets better.

Which comes first, the good work or the people you enjoy?

If you tell someone what to do and how to do it, they can do it.

But if you’re not there to tell them, they cannot.

Will you always be there?

If you show you care, people know you care.

And if you tell people you care, they’re not sure.

Why not show them so they can be sure?

If you tell the truth, people can work with you even if they don’t share your truth.

But if you sometimes tell the truth, it means sometimes you don’t.

And how does that work?

 

image credit — Miranda Granche

The Power of Checking In

When you notice someone having a difficult time, take the time to check in with them.  An in-person “Are you okay?” is probably the best way, but a phone call, text, or video chat will also do nicely.

When you’re having a difficult time, when someone notices and checks in you feel a little better.

When someone reacts in an outsized way, use that as a signal to check in with them.  Your check-in can help them realize their reaction was outsized, as they may not know.  It’s likely a deeper conversation will emerge naturally.  This is not a time to chastise or judge, rather it’s a time to show them you care.  An in-person “You got a minute?” followed by a kind “Are you doing okay?” work well in this situation.  But a phone call or text message can also be effective.  The most important thing, though, is you make the time to check in.

When you check in, you make a difference in people’s lives.  And they remember.

Is a simple check-in really that powerful?  Yes. Does it really make a difference?  Yes. But don’t take my word for it.  Run the experiment for yourself.  Here’s the experimental protocol.

  1. Pay attention.
  2. Look for people who are having a difficult time or people whose behavior is different than usual.
  3. When you notice the behavior of (2), make a note to yourself and give yourself the action item to check in.
  4. As soon as you can, check in with them. Do it in person, if possible.  If you cannot, call them on the phone or send them a text.  Email is too impersonal. Don’t use it.
    1. To initiate the check-in, use the “You got a minute?” and “Are you doing okay?” language. Keep it simple.
    2. After using the language of (4.1), listen to them. No need to fix anything.  Just listen.  They don’t want to be fixed; they want to be heard.
  5. Enjoy the good feeling that comes from checking in.
  6. Repeat 1-5, as needed.

After running the experiment, I think you’ll learn that checking in is powerful and helps both parties feel better.  And the more you run the experiment (demonstrate the behavior), the more likely it will spread.

And, just maybe, at some point down the road, someone may reach out to you and ask “You got a minute?” and “Are you doing okay?”.

Image credit — Funk Dooby

The Ins and Outs of Problems

When there’s a disagreement, listen before you talk.  And if that doesn’t work, listen more. With this approach, disagreement cannot blossom into a problem.

When there’s a decision to be made, make it.  There are problems with any decision you make, and you might as well learn them as soon as you can.

When there’s a change coming, get people together and talk about what’s coming. One thing to remember – the talking you do before the change is much more meaningful than the talking after the change causes problems.

When an important project is behind schedule, pause the project.  Nothing causes dialog, problem-solving, and movement of resources like pausing an important project.

When person A says one thing to person B and another to person C, call a meeting with A, B, and C and within fifteen minutes the source of the problem will be apparent to all.

When someone doesn’t do what they said they’d do, send them an email asking when they’ll do it.  Then, at the same time every week, “reply all” to your email and ask them when they’ll do it.  That way, they get to see the ever-growing, time-stamped record of their problematic non-performance.

When there’s no owner of the problem, there can be no solution.  And that’s a big problem.

When it’s your problem, solve it.

When someone tries to give you their problem, don’t take it.  Like any gift, if you don’t accept it, the would-be giver still owns it.

When there are no problems, there can be no learning.

Image credit — Rob Oo

Mike Shipulski Mike Shipulski
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